The Hunting Trip (33 page)

“I understand that. But surely your wife knows?”

“My wife, the former Vienna State Opera ballet dancer, known professionally as Brunhilde Wienerwald, is the primary person from whom I wish to hide my affluence and thus keep it under wraps.”

“I understand that, too. One of my friends, Madame Violet Tenser-Schultz McNamara, is a former Vienna State Opera ballet dancer, and they apparently teach them from childhood that money is to be squandered as quickly as possible. But before we get into discussing Viennese State Opera ballet dancers, I'm curious about the source of your affluence, if I may ask.”

“I'm trying to keep that under wraps, too, Mrs. O'Hara.”

“I was afraid of that. I can say this to you, Philip, because I am old enough to be your mother: It is never too late to repent and start off on a new path of righteousness and legality. So tell me in what dishonest and amoral way you came by your affluence, and maybe I can help you avoid getting jailed.”

“Actually, I'm a writer. An author.”

“You're not going to lie to me again, I hope, as I know that only the masters of literature, such as Wallingford Philips, my favorite author, make enough money to qualify for First National City Bank of New York City-Diamond checking accounts.”

“Guilty, ma'am.”

“Now I know you're lying. Only someone like Friar Aloysius of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance who obviously spent years listening to women confessing all in the confessional could have such intimate knowledge of women as the Friar, writing as Wallingford Philips, shows he has. All I can do when finishing one of the Wallingford Philips novels is to thank God those Trappist monks can't talk out loud to anybody and expose more of the secrets of the female heart than he already has.”

“My real name, ma'am, is Philip Wallingford Williams the Third. Does that suggest anything to you?”

“What comes to mind is ‘truth is stranger than fiction,' but what you've just said pushes that pretty close to the end of that envelope.”

“Nevertheless, I am Wallingford Philips. Or Wallingford Philips
is Phil Williams, whichever you prefer. Cross my heart and hope to die, Mrs. O'Hara. But please keep that under wraps.”

“Well, I certainly can understand, presuming you're no longer lying through your teeth, why you would want to, as you say, keep that under wraps. Thousands, hundreds of thousands, of women would compete for the privilege of murdering you in the most painful way for exposing the secrets of their hearts to the men of the world.”

“Are you in that number, Mrs. O'Hara?”

“No, I'm not. I decided early on in life that one has to play the cards one has been dealt. So when I married ol' K.J. I decided to play it straight with him, and it's worked out very well. I've spent a lot of time trying to talk my sisters in the gentle gender to play it straight with their husbands, but they just won't listen. I suppose it's the nature of the beast, as you've so often said in your novels.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Phil, why don't you call me Gladys? I think that we have a commonality of interests and may be useful to one another and that should put us on a first-name basis.”

“How may I be useful to you, Gladys?”

“Let's talk about commonality of interests first. You said that you don't wish to share the full extent of your affluence with your wife. I understand that because I don't wish to share the full extent of my affluence with my husband.”

“Why not? I thought he was loaded. I thought he owns the Grand Hotel, the Foggy Point Country Club . . .”

“And he and his lunatic brother also own a trucking company and have a lunatic idea that they can take the wheels off an eighteen-wheeler's trailer and load what's left—they are calling the box a ‘container'—onto ships and then put the wheels back on when the ship gets where it's going. They're going to call this lunatic idea The Land-To Sea-To-Land Company. But I digress.”

“Yes, ma'am?”

“There is loaded, Phil, and then there is
loaded
, if you take my meaning.”

“You mean you're more loaded than your husband?”

“Let me put it to you this way. Do you smoke, Phil?”

“Yes, ma'am. Excuse me, Gladys. I do. Cigars.”

“Good for you. Cigarettes are really bad for you. But since you smoke, I presume you've heard of the American Tobacco Company?”

“Yes, I have.”

“It was founded about the time of the American Revolution by a man named Heinrich Merican. Merican was my maiden name. I was born to Heinrich Merican the Fifth and his wife, Gertrude, as their only child, and later became their sole heir.

“When the first Heinrich Merican started selling Pocahontas cigars, he had the cigar bands and the labels on the box the cigars were going to go in printed by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia. Well, Ben was getting on in years, and as everybody knows he liked a little sip of Pennsylvania corn whisky every hour on the hour starting with his breakfast.

“Whatever the reason, what happened was a small printing error.”

“I don't think I understand.”

“The label on the cigar boxes and on the cigar bands was supposed to read ‘Fine Pocahontas Cigars. A Merican Tobacco Company product.' Old Ben dropped the space between the
A
and the
M
in Merican. What the labels now read was ‘Fine Pocahontas Cigars. AMerican Tobacco Company product.'

“Well, faced with having to peel all the labels off the cigar boxes and having to tear all the bands off the cigars and then glue the correct ones back on, ol' Heinrich said, ‘To hell with it. Get the mislabeled cigars out to the public. Most of them can't read anyway.'”

“That makes sense,” Phil said.

“And over the years the Merican Tobacco Company became the AMerican Tobacco Company.”

“I see what you mean by ‘there is loaded and then there is
loaded
.'”

“If my husband, K.J. Senior, knew the full extent of my affluence, he would press upon me to financially support the idiot idea he and his idiot brother have about taking the wheels off perfectly good truck trailers, calling them containers, and then loading them on ships. Getting the picture?”

“Getting it. That's a dumb idea if I ever heard one,” Phil said.

“We now turn to my eldest son, K. J. O'Hara, Junior, known as Junior, or Little K.J., who as I have previously mentioned is about your age, and whom I love dearly, much as you dearly love your Little Philip.”

“What about him?”

“He needs some guidance, as I wish to dissuade him from his present lifestyle, which consists almost entirely of buying cars he can't afford even on the lavish allowance K.J. Senior insists on giving him, chasing airheaded blondes with large bosoms and tight little rear ends, and shooting at clay pigeons off our pier on Muddiebay Bay.”

“He shoots at clay pigeons, you say?”

“He is the Browning Arms Company's most valued customer, as every time they change the location of a screw on their Diamond Grade Full Factory Engraved Over and Under shotguns with gold triggers and selective ejectors, he has to have it, as he believes it will make him a better marksman shooting at clay pigeons off our pier. So far he has bought nine such overpriced shotguns.”

“That's what the Browning people are always telling people, in essence, ‘Your scores will rise as does the price you paid for one of our better shotguns.' It is just not true.”

“Try telling that to Little K.J.,” Gladys said.

“I would be happy to, if you'd like.”

“Why would he believe you?”

“At the risk of sounding immodest, once he sees me shooting doubles off your pier with my back facing the flight path with my head and my own Diamond Grade Full Factory Engraved Over and Under shotgun with gold trigger between my knees, he'll believe anything I tell him.”

“I think that would do it,” Gladys said. “Tell me about your wife, Philip. She obviously didn't marry you for your money, as you're keeping your affluence under wraps so as to conceal it from her. How would you describe her in one or two or perhaps as many as five words?”

Phil moved his lips as he counted to five on his fingers, and then said, “Decent, honorable, but often difficult.”

“I understand, Phil, as that could be said about my friend Madame Violet Tenser-Schultz McNamara, who as I mentioned is—or was fifty years ago—also a Viennese ballet dancer. Phil, do you think it would be possible for you to point my jackass son away from airheaded blondes with tight rear ends and large bosoms and toward some females who are decent and honorable, if sometimes difficult? I would truly be grateful.”

“Well, Gladys, I'm sure you know what they say about being able to lead jackasses to water, which in this case would be decent, honorable but often difficult females, but I'll have a shot at it, if you'd like.”

“I'll think of some way to get you together.”

“I'm at your service, Gladys. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“Yes, there is. But I truly hesitate to ask.”

“Feel free to ask away.”

“I realize that it's asking a great deal, but do you think you could find it in your heart to autograph my personal first edition copy of
Comfort Me With Love
? The one that sold for a quarter and is now
worth on the used-book market between three and five hundred dollars?”

“I would be happy to do so.”

“Good. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Just as soon as I get off the phone, I'll get it out of the safe and Rollo, the bell captain at the Grand, will get in the hotel's VIP Guest Rolls-Royce and bring it to you. Together with of course all the paraphernalia that comes to new members of the Foggy Point Country Club.”

An hour later, Gladys called Phil.

“I am touched to tears by your inscription in
Comfort Me With Love
,” she said, her voice breaking with emotion.

“I thought you might be pleased,” Phil said.

What he had written was:

To Gladys,

With fond wishes from her fond confidant, who trusts her with his secrets as she trusts him with hers.

Wally

(Wallingford Philips)

[ FOUR ]

Goodhope, Mississippi

Monday, March 7, 1955

P
hil thought it almost inevitable that Brunhilde would eventually get to meet Madame Violet Tenser-Schultz McNamara, as they shared a common background in that both had been dancers in the Corps de Ballet of the Vienna State Opera in Austria.

But he really could not have had any idea how soon that would happen, nor, in his wildest imagination, could not have guessed how it would change his and her social status in and around Muddiebay, Goodhope, and Foggy Point.

What happened was that three weeks after Phil and Gladys had become chums, Brunhilde saw an announcement in
The Muddiebay Register-Press
newspaper announcing a special, all–Johann Strauss program of Viennese music by the Muddiebay Symphonic Orchestra. It was going to be presented the following evening at the Muddiebay Symphony and Livestock Auction Hall in downtown Muddiebay.

Brunhilde thereupon announced that Phil was going to take her to this performance or could expect to sleep in the backseat of his Jaguar until death did them part.

Actually, Phil didn't mind all that much going. He liked Strauss and felt a little sorry for Brunhilde because, although her advertisement had been running every day in
The Muddiebay Register-Press
newspaper, there had been zero applications for matriculation in the Brunhilde Wienerwald School of Classical Viennese Opera Ballet Dancing, which would be taught by a former dancer of the Corps de Ballet of the Vienna State Opera in Austria.

Brunhilde of course had the proper clothing to go to a symphony concert. Phil of course did not. But by then he had learned that the Goodhope Slightly Used Children's Clothing Discount Outlet had a sister—or perhaps brother—outlet, the Goodhope Slightly Used Gentlemen's Clothing Discount Outlet.

He went there and lucked out, and for $39.95 managed to deck himself out in white tie and tails. The collar was a little tight, and the tails a little long, but he thought he looked pretty spiffy when he loaded Brunhilde into the Jaguar for the thirty-odd-mile drive across the Muddiebay Causeway to the Muddiebay Symphony and Livestock Auction Hall in downtown Muddiebay.

When they entered the hall, a large and imposing septuagenarian woman—who was wearing about three pounds of pearls, a diamond tiara matching her dangling eight-inch diamond earrings, and an ankle-length mink coat—was standing in the middle of the entrance foyer.

“Mein Gott!”
Brunhilde said. “Will you look at that? She looks like a Hungarian madam who somehow got herself stuffed by a taxidermist.”

Brunhilde spoke in German, because she knew her husband did, and she did not think it would be polite to share her little
bon mot
with the maybe three hundred other people in the entrance foyer who did not.

“Did I hear you speaking German in a gutter Viennese accent?” the septuagenarian asked, also in German.

“What's it to you, fat old Hungarian madam?” Brunhilde responded. “Who speaks lousy German in the patois of a Hungarian brothel madam.”

“Well, if your name is Brunhilde Wienerwald, who is trying to pass herself off as a former member of the Corps de Ballet of the Vienna State Opera, I am here to expose you as a fraud before all these people.”

“What makes you think Brunhilde Wienerwald isn't a former member of the Corps de Ballet of the Vienna State Opera, you overstuffed former brothel-keeper in your Shetland pony fur coat, glass fake diamonds, and pounds of phony pearls?”

“What would a former member of the Corps de Ballet of the Vienna State Opera be doing here in Muddiebay, Mississippi?”